After years of addiction, Corvallis pinball guru doesn't intend to quit

Updated July 30, 2013 at 3:01 PM;Posted July 27, 2013 at 7:07 AM

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Brian Morrissette stands next to his favorite machine, a 1980 Panthera Morrisette, 18, loves vintage machines because their themes are original, while newer machines are less artistic.
(Emiko Bledsoe/The Pride)

Inside, players smoked, drank and sent multiple metallic balls shooting and bumping into elaborately designed playing fields. Carnival-like music running in loops blared and lights strobed the room. Occasionally, the sound of metal crunching rang out as players jerked their machines to control the ball.

This scene would look like just another chaotic arcade to many, but to Morrissette the underground vintage arcade, Blairally, was a magic place for pinball rebels like him.

Morrissette, now 18, has been in the business of buying, repairing, and selling pinball machines for 10 years.

“It’s kind of an addiction,” Morrissette said. “Kind of a sickness that spreads to people.”

Morrissette’s addiction began at 8. He and his father, Dan Morrissette, were at a family’s friends house when they found the machine that hooked them standing in the basement.

Not long after father and son discovered pinball they were obsessed. After buying a few pinball machines off eBay, the Morrissettes started their family business.

“Pinball has brought us together,” Morrissette said, “it’s given us a common denominator.”

Morrissette picked up the love of technology from his father, who served as a Navy sonar technician and later went to work for other technology firms.

View full sizeBrian Morrissette shows what the electrical wiring behind the back glass of the pinball machine, Panthera 2. Morrissette has repaired that machine, along with dozens of others, since he was 8 years old.Hunter Stewart/The Pride

When Brian Morrissette gets stumped, Dan Morrissette spends time after work repairing machines with his son.

“It’s something we both do to relax.” Brian Morrissette said.

He needed that at age 16 when his bipolar disorder flared.

“It was a pretty dark time,” Morrisette said.

Around that time he ran into difficulties with a pinball machine called Black Hole. Morrissette refused to let the darkness win.

Every night for three months, Morrissette and his father spent hours repairing.

He said he felt pretty helpless and pretty hopeless, but Morrissette found motivation in pinball. “It got me through the rest of the day knowing just at the end of the day I got to work on the game.”

Morrissette estimates that he spends 40 hours per week on pinball. However, during his upcoming sophomore year at Oregon State University, Morrissette will have to cut back.

Still, pinball ranks pretty high in his life.

“God is always going to be more important to me, but pinball is pretty important too,” Morrissette said.